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An old published account of the life of Samuel Beard
Back to Table of Contents Taken from Kentucky: A History of the State, ''published by Battle, Perrin & Knifflen, 4th Edition, 1887, Adair County. "Samuel moved his family, numbering 17, including servants, to Kentucky in 1798, accomplishing the entire journey by packhorses. They were from Culpeper and Greenbriar Counties in Virginia. They first halted for a short rest at Crab Orchard, Lincoln County, Kentucky, where there was a settlement and a fort. Thence they journeyed to Carpenter's Station, in the same county, and from there to a point on the Green River, two and a half miles below the mouth of Casey Creek, in what was then Green but now Adair County, Kentucky. Here Samuel located several thousand acres of land, and improved several hundred, on which he resided for many years. He gave away from time to time large bodies of land to friends and acquaintances, to induce them to settle near him. He also built on the Green River, near his home, the first grist mill in Adair County. In this wild country, his children grew to adulthood, early becoming inured to the hardships and privations incident to pioneer life. Samuel and his sons became noted for their skills in hunting and trapping. Samuel later moved to Tennessee, where he settled near Jackson, Madison County, where he died suddenly from heart disease." As this article was written in 1887, some of its statements are misleading. As best as we can prove, Samuel's family did not come from the counties mentioned in Virginia. No records are so far found for our family in either. Greenbrier County was formed in 1777 from parts of Montgomery and Botetourt, where our Beards ''did live. They did not live in the part that became Greenbrier, however, they lived on the Cowpasture River almost on the line between present day Bath and Botetourt Counties, and are found on tax lists and processioning lists there until 1783. We know that they then went to the Southwest Territory from facts assembled in the Timeline, where many many allied families are found with them. Most telling, we have marriages of children that took place in Greene County, Tennessee, and we have future statements of place of birth by Josiah Beard as well as some other of Samuel's children: Tennessee. So, to reiterate: our family lived in Virginia as the article states, but they then pioneered Eastern Tennessee and records of them are found there spanning the years of the early 1780s until about 1800, when they certainly did load up the packhorses and move into Kentucky, as described in the old article. The "servants" mentioned are of course slaves. We have records proving that all three of the brothers owned slaves. The account of the journey is probably as remembered by Josiah Beard, Samuel's son, about whom the article centered. He would have been a young man of eighteen on this journey by packhorse, and it is a good bet that he vividly remembered the stops along the way. A casual reading might leave the impression that Samuel lived most of his life on the Green River land in Kentucky and only moved south to middle Tennessee in his old age. The fact is, he was back in Tennessee by about 1812, leaving many relatives and some married children back in Adair County. He and his brother Hugh were on the Bedford County census in 1820. By 1830, Samuel and Rebecca had moved a couple of counties west and were listed in Henderson County, Tennessee. His son James lived nearby. We feel that they must have lived near the county line with neighboring Madison County. We only wish that this article mentioned where Samuel and Rebecca are buried, and to whom he was married, for Rebecca's maiden name is still lost in time.